The History of Moviegoing, Exhibition, and Reception—or HoMER—Project was founded by an international group of cinema scholars in June 2004.
It aims to promote understanding of the complex, international phenomena of film going, exhibition, and reception through several means:
Talitha Ferraz holds a degree in journalism from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), and a master’s and PhD in Communication and Culture from the School of Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (ECO-UFRJ), having completed a sandwich PhD at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCSH-Nova), in Portugal. She conducted postdoctoral research at the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies at Ghent University (CIMS-UGent) in Belgium, supported by the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (Capes). She is a permanent faculty member on the Postgraduate Programme in Cinema and Audiovisual Studies at Fluminense Federal University (PPGCine-UFF), where she teaches and conducts research in the ‘Histories and Politics’ field. She also coordinates the History of Moviegoing Exhibition and Reception – HoMER Network, and is a member of the International Media and Nostalgia Network (IMNN). She is the author of the book “A Segunda Cinelândia Carioca” (Mórula, 2012) and co-editor of the volumes “Rupturas e insurgências no cinema e audiovisual” (EDUFF, 2024) and “Nostalgias e mídia: no caleidoscópio do tempo” (E-Papers, 2018). Her research focuses on the history of film exhibition and audiences, movie theatres and urban space, media and memory studies, and nostalgia and technostalgia in cinema and audiovisual media, as well as ruinology and movie theatres.
Matthew Rule-Jones (né Jones) is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter. He is a specialist in film audiences, community cinema and film archives. He is the author of Cinema Memories: A People’s History of 1960s Cinemagoing (BFI, 2022) with Professor Melvyn Stokes (UCL) and Dr Emma Pett (University of York), and Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain: Recontextualising Cultural Anxiety (Bloomsbury, 2019). His current research explores contemporary and historical community cinema practices in the UK. He is collaborating with Cinema for All (formerly the British Federation of Film Societies) on a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust-funded project to catalogue and open the archive of the Federation for the first time since its establishment in the 1940s. As non-commercial, volunteer-led film exhibition prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary in Britain, Dr Jones’ important work is shedding new light on this underexplored aspect of the history of film consumption in the UK and the vital role played by the Federation in this largely untold story.